


They Had Numbers For Names

by redtrouble



Category: To The Edge of the Sky (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtrouble/pseuds/redtrouble
Summary: Evren and her clan of drifters run into trouble outside a biodome where she meets three PHASe operatives... [This short story retells Evren's flashback from the TTEOTS prologue to flesh out the world a bit more and explore the concept of the drifters.]
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	They Had Numbers For Names

_I was born under the stars, and my first gasp was filled with wind. A shout of joy welcomed me into the world. I was not trapped within white walls, breathing in the sterile air while masked men swept me from my mother’s arms to wash me, dress me, and tag me with a number. No, I was pulled from my mother’s womb and held aloft, covered in blood and placenta, as my first cries filled the night and a thousand stars fell across the sky._

_That is the way of drifters. We live under an open sky, wandering the land like migratory birds. It is the only life that I have ever known._

“Evren.”

The woman’s thick accent snapped me out of my thoughts and I looked around in surprise.

“Hm?”

My gaze snagged on Elder Esha draped in her colorful saree coming up beside me. One wrinkled hand held the worn fabric against her torso while the other looped lovingly around my arm, slowing our pace as the caravan of our people flowed around us toward our new camp in the Soza Valley.

“We are set to arrive in Soza midday,” Esha explained in her thick accent and smoky voice, “but the pathfinders report our camp is not far from a biodome.”

I straightened in surprise, my sluggish steps immediately turning attentive.

“We will pass close to Atlas,” she continued, “and you know how the city-dwellers despise us. I’m afraid the young ones might not understand.”

“Should we recall the sentinels?”

“I have diverted our guards to escort them,” she explained. “They will not provoke our warriors, but they may attempt to engage the stragglers. It could turn violent.”

“I’ll watch over them,” I assured her. She smiled and patted my arm lovingly.

“I know you will,” she said. I waited for her to give me further instructions, but there was only the sound of the dry earth crunching beneath our soft-soled boots.

I looked at her, at her brown hair so dark it was almost black looped into a braid over her shoulder, at the bright orange scarf draped over her head to shield her from the sun, at her warm, brown eyes full of the wisdom of the ages. She was not my mother, but she had been a mother to us all. To me, especially… When my own mother died, it was Esha who held me in her arms as I cried, who picked me up when I fell and tended my skinned knees, who guided me into womanhood.

“You have always looked after the clan as though it was yours already,” Esha mused. “Someday soon, it will be.”

“Not too soon,” I said with a playful smile, but I meant every word. I was not ready to lead the clan, but most of all…I was not ready to lose Esha.

I squeezed her hand and rested my head on her shoulder.

_When climate change reshaped the world, it broke apart continents that were once whole, dried up rushing rivers in some places and drowned all life in others, made thriving lands unhospitable, and scorched the rest into uninhabitable wastelands. The death toll was staggering. Our only hope was to band together in whatever piece of habitable land we could find, but as the world grew smaller and smaller around us, people began pushing and shoving to secure their place of safety. They drew bitter lines in the sand and hoarded resources in desperation until madness swept through the survivors._

_Gangs and militias formed, turning camps into gulags and city-states into dictatorships. They led raids against nearby settlements, built barbed wire fences around their own, and erected guard towers armed with snipers. They stole food and water from their own people and called it anything from a “redistribution of wealth” to a “protection tax”. They executed dissenters in the name of keeping the peace. Desperation had become depravity…_

_And misery turned to rage._

_The violence that ensued killed millions, washing the land in a glut of blood until the world was silent except for the crows. The men and women who rose to power in the wake of the bloodshed used science and psychology to pick up the pieces of our broken world. They created the first of the biodomes, the last bastions of humanity. They banned firearms and outlawed mob rule, enforcing their authority with diplomacy and policing injustice with civility. The biodomes became monuments not just to survival, but civilization._

Three hours passed before we came upon the outskirts of Atlas, one of the country’s larger biodomes. As Esha had predicted, a mob had gathered outside—men and women dressed in clean, crisp linens, their hair perfectly styled, their jewelry reflecting light. They stood on observation platforms and whispered to one another, their eyes following us like one of nature’s great aberrations.

A few of our children stared back at them, jaws slack in awe. They had never seen a city or its people before, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them what those people were saying when they whispered to one another. Besides, these arrogant observers didn’t concern me. It was the crowd on the ground, closer to the city limits and dressed in street clothes and masks, that I kept my eye on as the caravan moved past. They were young men and women doing nothing more than posturing, laughing and shouting their insults from the sidelines, but there was something electric in the air. All it would take was one wrong move for the tension to break.

The guards hastened the children along and I slowed my pace, counting the stragglers as they hurried past me. _One kilometer,_ I reminded myself. _That’s all we have to walk to clear the mob._ But as I drew closer, I could make out their jeers, and my throat tightened at the words.

“Dirty drifters aren’t welcome!”

“Get away before you dirty our city walls!”

“They could dirty them just by looking at them…”

“They probably haven’t bathed their whole lives.”

“I doubt they even know what the word means.”

“I bet they roll around on the ground and call that bathing.”

The insults flew back and forth and I hoped the children were too far ahead to hear them. The world was harsh enough without having to listen to idiots yelling at us. A fellow drifter met my gaze as he passed me, shaking his head sadly. I nodded my understanding. The city-dwellers were annoying, but rather than hating them…I pitied them. We all did, or those of us old enough to understand the truth: that they were ignorant.

_Not everyone chose to live within the walls. The drifters took to the wastelands and became nomads. There are many clans scattered across the wastelands, but not a single one of them stays in one place for very long. It was the act of claiming ownership that led to so much violence and hardship, and we refuse to repeat that cycle by declaring “mine”. The land belongs to everyone._

_We journey this unhospitable earth looking for life, for resources, for heritage, and for hope._ _Living this way is hard, but it has taught us to respect nature and to respect one another. We are a young people, only a few generations deep, and still developing our own culture, which changes with every new person who joins us, but we have kindness and open-mindedness. We accept one another unconditionally, sharing in our failures and our successes. In this way, we thrive._

_Not everyone sees us that way. The city-dwellers, whose harshest punishment is exile, believe the drifters are no more than criminals who banded together when they were kicked out of the biodomes. We drifters tell a different story—that we chose this life—but the city-dwellers’ version of events is not entirely untrue. Every exile that came to us, we accepted them into our fold. No one deserves to die out here alone. Everyone deserves a second chance._

_Even those who once looked down on us._

A small figure slipped between the other drifters and my heart nearly stopped at the sight of the young boy called Ilyas. He stared back at me, waiting.

“Evi,” he said and held out his hand to me. I hurried toward him, grasping his hand and drawing him against my side, away from the crowd. “Are we dirty?”

“Well,” I began with a smile, “when did you bathe last?”

“Um.” He bashfully looked away, counting days on the fingers of his free hand. I laughed and snatched up that hand, tickling his side. He giggled and tried to wriggle away but I held on. I bent down to sniff his hair and wrinkled my nose. “Evi!” he complained, still laughing. I then pretended to smell myself and shivered. He laughed again.

“Well, that answers that,” I said. “When we get to camp, we’ll both takes baths. How about it?”

He nodded with his entire upper body. “Okay.”

“Good.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some of those city dwellers drifting closer to the caravan. My muscles tensed, warning bells going off in the back of my head. I had always been good at reading people’s body language, at predicting what they will do. And right in that moment, I saw the tension in one of the men, saw his feet pointed outward despite his torso turned away. He was rigid, hands curled into fists in spite of the smile on his face. He was on edge, a ticking time bomb…and his eyes were deadlocked on a drifter who would walk right by him.

I bent to whisper to Ilyas and pointed him toward the crowd of drifters ahead of us. “Run on and catch up with Jesheca and the others, okay?” I said, trying to keep it light. He nodded, unaware of the potential danger, and took off.

I closed the distance between me and the other drifter, Hana, and looped my arm around her shoulders, putting myself between her and the city-dwellers. She looked at me with utter relief, a silent “thank you” in her eyes. I smiled like nothing was wrong and pretended I didn’t hear the jeers and taunts. I couldn’t help but notice the annoyance at being ignored flash across their faces. _Feeling how unimportant you are, yet?_ I was unable to keep my friendly smile from turning into a grin.

Suddenly I was yanked by my shirt. Caught unawares, I stumbled back, colliding with a man’s hard body. The reactionary part of my brain shoved Hana forward, away from the crowd.

“Go,” I commanded her.

“Evren—”

“Go!” I yelled before spinning to face my attacker. The man I had observed before was glaring down at me, disgust wrinkling his upper lip. _Not good._ Rage was a surface emotion, flimsy when fired at fake targets. But disgust bubbled up from a deeper, psychological well, and I realized this man truly believed that I was less than human.

I quickly swiped at his arm just to force him to release my shirt. He instantly shoved me back toward his cohorts, who fanned out to create a semi-circle around me. They started shouting, amping up for the coming conflict, but none had the guts to lash out. _Yet._ I focused on the man sauntering toward me, reading his body language. _He is looking for a fight, but he doesn’t want to start it. He’s waiting for me to do it for him._ I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. _If he wants to fight, he’ll have to throw the first punch._

I kept my face stoic and relaxed my posture as much as possible as he crossed to me. He grabbed my shirt, yanking me against him. I glared at him but kept my hands held out to my sides. He narrowed his gaze on me and I could almost see the wheels turning inside his head, trying to figure out how to spark this fire.

Suddenly the shouting stopped. The man looked beyond me, shock slackening his jaw. I glanced around and saw that everyone was looking at something behind me. I twisted in the man’s grasp to see the crowd had parted and a young man was standing there, silently staring at everyone.

Everything about his appearance screamed “biodome”, from his clean, white jacket over black layers to his black hair highlighted blue, but there was an intensity in his dark eyes that struck me to the core. His presence was overwhelming.

He was like no one I had ever seen.

_It is the way of the drifters to be kind. To forgive. To accept. To help. It is this harsh and unforgiving world that reminds us what is important, because we know what it is like to be starving and parched, to bleed and hurt, to wander endlessly. So, we feed those who are hungry. We give water to those who are thirsty. We bandage those who are wounded and we guide those who are lost._

_Because we are all human._

A taller man with silver-purple hair, light-colored eyes, and dressed in all black appeared next to the first, his presence both regal and commanding. He exuded composure, like a living statue. _Who_ are _they?_ I had never met a city-dweller outright, only seen them from afar. _Is this what it’s like?_ Even as the thought brushed my mind, I dismissed it. I didn’t know much about the city-dwellers, but I knew for certain that these two mysterious men were different.

Everything about them seemed to be… _more_.

I looked again at the man in the white jacket and our eyes met. The intensity in them hit me so hard that I had to remind myself to breathe. His eyes widened just a fraction and I knew something was about to happen, but for the first time in a long time…I didn’t know what.

Suddenly he rushed towards me and I shut my eyes tightly, bracing for impact. A hand wrapped around my arm, pulling me back. My feet slid across the pebbles and dust. I locked my frame, waiting for a blow, but none came. When I opened my eyes, I was stunned to see this man had put himself between me and the city-dwellers, a crease in his brow and a challenge in his eyes. Since when did a city-dweller help a drifter…?

I looked at the others, at their taut frames, and knew a fight was inevitable. This stranger had openly defied them by attempting to protect me. It might as well have been a first punch. One look at the man in the white jacket and I knew that he knew this, that he was prepared to fight them all. _Why?_

I slipped from behind him, taking a defensive posture as I scanned the crowd, looking for the tell-tale signs to figure out who would strike first.

“What are you doing…?”

The voice beside me was soft and full of surprise. I glanced at the man in the white jacket to find him staring at me in shock.

“Helping,” I answered. Was it not obvious? My eyes went back to the crowd where I saw the man who had grabbed me tense up. He would make the first move.

“I can handle it.”

“That’s not the point.”

The man screamed and took a swing at the stranger, who effortlessly redirected the punch and kicked the man in his stomach. He doubled over and stumbled backward, holding his gut. Another man rushed forward, fist cocked for a punch, but the stranger easily ducked under the swing, side-stepped to his outside, and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back. He kicked his legs in, dropping him to his knees, and held him firmly as he screamed in pain.

That was all it took to motivate the others. Two more rushed out of the crowd.

“I’m Zero,” the stranger said. “You?”

“What?” I blurted, stunned by both his skill and ill-timed introductions. “Evren, but—”

I opened my mouth to tell him to watch out but he immediately turned, kicking the nearest opponent in the chest and sending him sprawling on the ground. He dodged away from the next man’s swings, still holding his prisoner immobilized on the ground. As the attacker came at him with a third punch, Zero’s elbow connected with his face with a sickening crunch. Blood rushed down his front as he collapsed in agony.

I was so distracted watching him fight that I didn’t notice the others break away from the crowd. An arm wrapped around my throat, pulling me back. I braced my core to keep my balance and clutched the man’s arm to keep it from crushing my windpipe. Before I could calculate how best to disentangle myself from the chokehold, Zero grabbed my assailant’s wrist and twisted it away from me until I heard something crack.

Chaos erupted as more men and women sprang forth from the crowd while the more intelligent majority backed further away. I was no longer able to track Zero’s movements as opponents rushed at me. I shut out the noise and focused on what was happening in front of me, on the woman coming at me with a pipe in her hands. Time seemed to slow down. I could feel my heart pounding steadily in my chest, hear my breath in controlled drags.

As the woman neared, I noticed two essential weaknesses. The first: her grip on the pipe was all wrong, allowing me to easily disarm her. Two: she’d worn the wrong kind of shoes to a fight, meaning she would be unsteady on her feet. A second later, she was upon me. I grabbed the pipe as she swung, jerking it out of her hands with ease, and then side-stepped, tripping her into the dirt. I moved out of her reach and immediately analyzed the next opponent.

His left shoulder was angling back, arm tensing up. He was going to punch me with his left fist. He was much taller than me, so he would swing from a lower position. The way his forearm turned outward suggested he would strike with an uppercut. The way his eyes were squinting told me he either couldn’t see well—likely due to the dust kicked up by the brawl—or that his primal brain was trying to protect his eyes by closing them, meaning he wasn’t an experienced fighter. As he came closer, I noticed his steps favored his right left, hinting at a possible injury.

Time flowed again as he reached me. I threw my weight backward, evading his fist, then immediately pivoted to the right. I kicked the back of his knee and he folded in agony. In my peripheral, I noticed a blur come rushing at me. I immediately swung out with the pipe and felt it connect with bone with a loud crack. A man fell, holding his jaw, shrieking in pain.

I stared at the bodies writhing on the ground, adrenaline still rushing through my veins. Their pain registered in my subconscious, but it was a remote sense of regret that I felt. My own sense of self-preservation was still in control. My gaze followed the collection of bodies to where Zero was standing. The pipe slipped from my fingers and clattered in the dust by my feet. I lifted my gaze and found him staring at me with wide eyes. _Is that…surprise?_ I didn’t know. I just stared back.

Suddenly the purple-haired man from before walked toward us, yanking me back into the present. I looked around and realized the crowd was dispersing, some outright running away. Our opponents—the ones who could still move—were stumbling to their feet or slinking across the ground toward the city. The man whom I had hit with the pipe was still holding his jaw, tears leaking out of his eyes as he wriggled away.

_We are drifters, but we are also human, and so we feed those who are hungry. We give water to those who are thirsty. We bandage those who are wounded…_

I knelt down and reached out to help him up. The sound he made was somewhere between a hiss and a scream, and he started rocking anxiously across the ground like a worm to get away from me. The purple-haired man side-stepped him as he came to stand beside us. My stomach roiled with pity as I stood up and turned away, flooded with guilt. It was illogical. I was defending myself. Still…

“I think you could have avoided fighting,” the purple-haired man said with a kind voice, looking at Zero with the loving patience of a father, “if you’d let me talk to them.” He turned his gaze to me and smiled. “Are you okay?”

His words to Zero stung me, stirring my guilt into a whirlpool of regret. It had been self-defense and I did not answer to him, but I still felt scolded. Could he have really diffused the situation? Experience had taught me it was impossible, but there was way too much wisdom in that young face. He looked no older than me but I felt like a child before him. Maybe he really could have done as he said…

“Yes,” I answered quietly then nodded in Zero’s direction, “thanks to Zero. I wasn’t expecting anyone to jump in to help me.” Zero looked at me in surprise. I shrugged one shoulder. “Not many people would come to the defense of a nomad. Your help was appreciated.”

Zero just stared at me, as though being thanked was somehow more shocking to him than him helping a drifter was shocking to me. The other man smiled sadly.

“That is heartbreaking to think,” he said. “Your people are probably the kindest and most well-adapted culture out of any in the past fifty years. You open yourself to anyone, guide and help others, pride yourself on equality…” His smile turned wry. “It’s a shame there’s so many misunderstandings between your people and those who chose to stay behind in the cities.”

I stared at him, wondering how—or why—he could possibly hold such opinions on drifters. Had he once been one of us? But everything about him screamed the opposite… Where did this kindness come from? Why did a man so young have such wizened eyes?

Suddenly those eyes looked behind me and his wry smile became a grin.

“You’re back already?” he said.

I looked over my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw the figure in all black moving right behind me. _Where the hell did_ he _come from?_ I hadn’t even heard him. He barely glanced at me as he passed.

“Nine,” he said by way of greeting, his voice deep. “I checked the area, but there wasn’t anything to suggest it was ever stashed here.”

 _Nine?_ I glance between Zero and the purple-haired man called Nine. _Another number name…?_

A thoughtful expression stole across Nine’s face and he hummed, slipping a pair of large, violet-colored glasses over his eyes. For a moment, I thought I saw text begin scrolling across the lenses.

“I’ll be right back,” Nine announced, wandering away from the group.

I looked at the two men still standing there. Zero avoided my gaze, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other, and the man in all black seemed to be spacing out, his hands shoved into his leather jacket’s pockets and his eyes focused on the horizon. _Zero and Nine…_ They had to be codenames, meaning the man in black must have a number for a name, too.

“So, who do you work for?” I asked. Zero, at least, was too highly trained to be a common street thug, and if he was running around with the other two, they must all work for some elite corporation. The first name that sprang to mind was— “PHASe?”

Zero finally looked at me, his eyes widened in shock, while the man in black’s grey gaze locked onto me like I was a target. The tension in the air thickened. I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat, feeling uneasy with both of them staring at me like that. Was it really some big secret? _They are running around calling themselves codenames and fighting like super soldiers,_ I thought. _Anyone with half-a-braincell could put two-and-two together…_

The muscles in my jaw tightened as I squared my shoulders, refusing to be intimidated. One of them _had_ helped me, and another was uncommonly kind. I didn’t think they would turn on me now.

I looked Zero in the eyes. “So, what’s with the number names?” I asked him outright. There was a hint of a nervousness that flickered across his face.

“Uh, well…” He glanced at the man in black so I followed his gaze. The man just stared at me, his eyes betraying nothing.

“He’s Zero,” I said, pointing, “and the other one is Nine. You must have one, too, right?”

Finally, he said, “They’re codenames. Mine is ‘Four’.” His eyes briefly scanned me head-to-toe. “And unless you’re hiding PHASe clearance somewhere, that’s all you get to know.”

I nodded, mouthing the word, “Okay.” After a moment, he turned to look at the horizon once more, releasing me from the intensity of his stare. The man called Four was just as intense as Zero, but even more intimidating. He was…colder. Deadlier. And, unlike the others, I couldn’t get a read on him at all.

A few seconds of silence ticked by before I broke it.

“What’s PHASe like?” I asked. I could feel Four’s eyes on me once again but I refused to look at him. I kept my gaze locked on Zero. “I’ve only read about it on the net.”

“It’s…unique,” he replied carefully. I waited for him to continue but he didn’t. _Is that it?_ I smiled, hoping to disarm him, but it seemed to have the opposite effect because he tensed up instead.

“I was just curious,” I threw out casually to end the conversation.

“Being curious can get you killed,” Four said, and I couldn’t help but meet his grey eyes, my smiling instantly vanishing. A shiver rushed down my spine.

“Four is only kidding,” Zero interjected, trying to reassure me, but then he added, “Mostly.”

When Four looked away, I blinked, feeling the tension flow out of me like water down a drain. _Scary…_ I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It was time to move on. I scanned the horizon until I found the caravan in the distance. Relief rushed through me. They were well beyond the city limits now. Hana had gotten to safety and would likely be returning with the sentinels soon. _I should get back and let them know I’m okay._

I turned back to Zero and Four to say my goodbyes just as Nine returned, a smile on his lips and his eyes locked on mine.

“You’re familiar with the wastelands, right?” he asked. I nodded. “Would you be willing to help us find something?”

I was a bit taken aback by the request but I immediately nodded again. “Of course.”

Nine smiled. “You didn’t even need time to think it over?”

I shrugged one shoulder sheepishly. “It’s—” It probably made me look over-eager and naïve. “—my people’s way to do so.”

_…and we guide those who are lost. It is the way of the drifters._

“We try to help anyone out in the wastelands. We can’t just let people wander around and get lost…” There were a number of ugly deaths that awaited the unprepared in the wastelands. “And no one knows them better than us.” I nodded. “I’m happy to help you find any place you guys need.”

Nine’s smile widened. “Thank you. We’re grateful for your help.” He nodded to Four, who slipped away from the group. I watched him disappear around the city limits as Nine said, “We’re looking for an old, abandoned church.”

“An abandoned church?” I echoed, thinking back on our trek to Soza and what I knew of the area from the last time I was here. It had been half-a-decade, but not much changed out there in the wastes… There was one particularly decrepit building about eight kilometers southwest but—no, I think that was a library. That couldn’t be right. I squinted at the horizon, thinking, when suddenly it hit me. The place by the dried-out lake! I nodded excitedly. “I think I know what you’re looking for.” I eyed him and Zero, noting their black boots. I’m not sure they could walk sixteen kilometers in those things without some painful blisters. “It’s a bit of a hike though…”

“Not to worry,” Nine said with a smile.

A few minutes later, a roaring engine drew my gaze to four giant wheels supporting a black, open-framed all-terrain rover exiting the city walls. It looked incredibly high-tech. I couldn’t help but gawk as Four drove it over to us and stopped, idling for us to get in. Nine motioned for me to take the front seat.

“Navigator,” he said to me as Zero climbed into the back.

I bit my lip to hide my smile as I turned toward the vehicle. Nervous energy vibrated inside my chest as I reached up to grip the frame and haul myself into the front passenger seat. Four glanced at me as I buckled in, his eyes moving to the rearview mirror as he watched Nine take his seat beside Zero. Then, he shifted gears and hit the accelerator.

_It is the only life I have ever known._

**Author's Note:**

> Esha was based on Shohreh Aghdashloo because she's awesome.


End file.
